Definition

One must make a distinction however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the autocrats among us can be “literalists of the imagination”—above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have it.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Sunday Mini-Challenge: Chained Rhyme, Part One

Greetings
and salutations, fellow toads, toadettes and toadlings, and all who follow the
goings on at the pond. This is hedgewitch here. Since I abstained from our annual collaborative
poetry endeavor, I felt the least I could do was to make a post or two of some
kind to contribute to the fun; Kerry graciously suggested that I might want to try my hand
at a form prompt for the Sunday Mini-Challenge.

As those
who follow this Sunday feature know, Kerry's are some large poetic form shoes to fill.
(I mean that in the best possible way, Kerry, definitely not Crocs or anything!) While I love the stuff--the more complex and tortuous the better--I knew I
would never be able to be as lucid as Kerry always is in laying out complicated form structures. So I immediately started looking for a
compromise. I believe I've found one which I will present in two posts, of
which this is the first.

Chained, or
linked rhyme is the play-pretty we're going to explore, and it has several definitions and
many permutations. The concept of chaining a rhyme, or a chain rhyme scheme is
very basic in poetry, and is used in many traditional
poetic forms, such as the terza rima, and the Rubaiyat, and that type is
defined by wikipedia
simply as "the linking together of stanzas by carrying a rhyme over from
one stanza to the next." We'll be dealing with that in the next chain
rhyme prompt. For now let's explore the simpler and to me, more unusual type,
also known as 'interlocking rhyme.'

In his
classic Book of Forms, Lewis Turco defines it thus:

"Linked
rhyme (or chained rhyme) chimes the last syllable or syllables of a line with
the first syllable or syllables of the next line…"

Here's an
excerpt from an example Turco gives of a medieval Irish poem, The Charm of Eire, which shows how it goes:

See? Very simple and open-ended. No counting, no
real stipulated meter (though this example has a definite four-beat cadence)
and very easy to adapt to a more 'free verse' flow. Really, besides that
linking rhyme of last word to first of next, the structure and direction
of the form is loose and completely open-ended.

Here are two short examples I scratched up that
show two different styles (of many) that the form can take.

First, merely
rhyming the last syllable of one line to the first syllable of the next:

Love in
a teapotHot and
sweetBeaten to
gold lightNight
poured awayDaylong
through your fingers.

So the
challenge, Toads, should you choose to accept it, is to write a poem using
interlocking rhyme, where the last syllable or syllables on one line rhyme
with the first syllable or syllables of the next. It can be short or long, formal or informal, on any
topic and in any arrangement you fancy. As in the Irish verse above, and my
examples, it can be one syllable only that rhymes(cascade/made), or it can be any form of the rhyming element (hills/filled, umber/slumbering) rather than an exact duplication. I hope you'll play around with various ways of using the repetition, get crazy and have some fun with it. Rules are made to be broken, or at least bent in a good cause, I always say.

Finally, I
hope no one will find this form too tangled up, but rather as challenging and enjoyable as I did. For
those who like a visual starting point, I've included a few of my
amateur
photos. Please feel free to use them, with attribution.

If the form just
doesn't appeal to you, you can write at will to any of these pics, or to the theme of the one below, 'Tangle.' Remember to provide a link to the Garden
with your post.

The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon
CST to allow extra time for the creative process, so please link something new not an unrelated or previously written piece.
This is in the spirit of our Real Toads project to create opportunities
for poets to be newly inspired. Management reserves the right to
remove unrelated links but invites you to share a poem of your choice on Open
Link Monday.

28 comments:

A very inspiring post - Joy (just as Kerry's are.) You guys really are so wonderful at coming up with these different forms - it is terrific. (This is why I was first - checking to see what Kerry might have in store.)

I've never consciously heard of chain rhyme. It is really lovely in your hands, and Turco's both. (It has a very Irish feel in his.) And both of your examples from your own work are just lovely - beautiful short poems; in some ways like the day and night/golden and silver apples of a similar theme.

Anyway, I look forward to trying something along these lines. I've got a strong sense that mine will not be so lyrical==(ha!) Thanks again. k.

I can't tell you how excited I get at seeing a wonderfully challenging form (and one I have never tried before) demonstrated so effortlessly. I feel the compulsion to roll up my sleeves and get stuck in!Thank you for this, Joy, and for sharing your beautiful photos with us.

Thanks everyone--hope you do have fun. Just in case you read mine and think you have to rhyme the end words also, you certainly don't, but you can if you'd like. The only rule is that the last syllable(s) of one line have to rhyme with first syllable(s) of the next.

Thanks to everyone who participated. I can honestly say there wasn't a single poem I didn't find interesting, or a single person who wasn't creative with the form or optional free verse topic. I especially enjoyed the way every single take was different in sound, feel and approach. Thanks again for playing my silly game. ;_)

Late again! I'm the white rabbit in more ways than one. This was so much harder than I expected! I sat with my poem for hours, scapping ideas and starting over until Rapunzel tapped me on the shoulder and said "You are talking about my situation." Hmm. Thank you, Amy, for this challenge.

I would have been here on time, but I was late! This form is cool, but proved to be very challenging for me. The form really took over in steering the direction of the poem. It's really a good challenge!

@Susan, better late than never, and I appreciate that these take a bit of work. BTW, who is Amy? This is not the first time you've called me by her name, so just wondered. ;_) I'm very glad if you enjoyed the challenge.

@Other Mary--That's the best excuse I ever heard for being late--the truth. ;_) I think this is a great form for doing what you say--changing the thrust of a poem, and in it's way, much more so than many more complicated ones. Glad you enjoyed.

Once again thanks to all of you--I hope you take the time to go check out each others' work, because as I said above, every poem was a little different take, and many were truly exceptional.I will be back in a month to torture you with a more complex example of chaining. Bwahhahahaha..

Hello sweet Toads and Toad followers! Fireblossom here with another Fireblossom Friday challenge. I bet most of you are expecting some simpl...

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